Chapter 1
The Eighteen
Open Ginsburg's Introduction to page 348. The page is a list. Eleven lines, each one a verse from the Hebrew Bible with a few of its words quoted, and every line ends the same way: the text is altered.
The book is Ginsburg's Introduction to the Massoretico-critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible, printed in London in 1897. It is a book about margins, the small notes the old scribes left beside the words. Here is the first line of the list:
"For he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye," but the text is altered.
Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible, 1897, p. 348, entry 1
And here is the fifth:
"Art thou not from everlasting O Lord my God, mine Holy One? we shall not die." the text is altered.
Ginsburg, 1897, p. 348, entry 5
Read the second one twice. A man is speaking to God. He says: you are from everlasting, my Holy One. And then he says we shall not die. The sentence is built to say you shall not die, and the you is gone.
The list does not hide that it was written by editors. It sits in the margins of the oldest dated manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, in the editors' own hand, with a number.
The margin
Turn back one page, to 347. Ginsburg tells the reader where the notes live.
"In the best MSS. there are remarks in the margin against certain readings calling attention to the fact that they exhibit 'an emendation of the Sopherim'."
Ginsburg, 1897, p. 347
The Sopherim are the scribes. The oldest dated manuscript of the Hebrew Bible known to Ginsburg in 1897 is the St. Petersburg Codex of A.D. 916. He says that it carries the note in four places, and he gives two of them:
"On Ezek. VIII 17 it states that it is 'one of the eighteen emendations of the Sopherim'. On Zech. II 12 the remark is somewhat different in form, but the same in purport and is as follows: 'one of the eighteen emendations of the Sopherim, the sages, their memory is for good and for a blessing'."
Ginsburg, 1897, p. 347
Picture the room. A scribe in the year 916 sits beside a line of Zechariah and writes in the margin that this is one of the eighteen. Then he blesses the memory of the men who made the change.
Nobody is sneaking. The editors put a number on their own work and signed it with a blessing.
The sentence
The oldest record of the list is a rabbis' commentary on Exodus, the Mekhilta. Ginsburg says so on page 348: "The oldest record of these alterations is given in the Mechiltha on Exod. XV 7." The Hebrew of that commentary, which this archive holds in the Sefaria text with Silverstein's English, carries the sentence that explains the whole list. It comes after each verse, again and again:
אֶלָּא שֶׁכִּנָּה הַכָּתוּב
"Scripture used a euphemism."
Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shirah 6, the Hebrew; the English is ours. Silverstein's: "It is actually written 'Him,' but Scripture here is euphemistic."
It is actually written "Him." The commentators knew the plain reading and said so, and they named what the page now says as a stand-in.
Take the entry from the list that has the most in it. Second Samuel 20:1 is a cry in the street: every man to his tents, O Israel. The Mekhilta puts the Hebrew and the gloss side by side:
אִישׁ לְאֹהָלָיו יִשְׂרָאֵל
"Each man to his tent ("ohalav"), O Israel" — a euphemism (for "god" ["elohav"]).
Mekhilta, Shirah 6; Silverstein's English
Ginsburg tells how the swap was done: the text read "every one to his gods, O Israel", and "the Sopherim transposed the two middle letters of the word" (p. 356). Two letters change places and the gods become tents. The Hebrew words are close enough to touch.
Jeremiah 2:11 is the same kind of edit with a smaller tool. Ginsburg says the ancient records "emphatically declare" that the original read my glory, and that the Sopherim made it his glory by trading one letter, a yod for a vav. To say that Israel swapped God's own glory for an idol, he writes, "was deemed too bold a statement and derogatory to the Lord" (p. 356). One letter, and God stops speaking in the first person about his own glory.
First Samuel 3:13 is the smallest of all. The old reading, Ginsburg says, was that the sons of Eli cursed God. The Sopherim "were most anxious to alter the text as little as possible", and by dropping a single letter the sentence came out saying the sons brought a curse on themselves. The Greek translation kept the older words: "because his sons cursed God" (p. 354). The scribes who did this were careful men making the least change that would work, and they wrote down that they had done it.
The one everyone remembers
The famous entry is not on the Mekhilta's list. The Tanchuma gives it, and the Massorah of the St. Petersburg Codex gives it, and the three Yemen manuscripts in the British Museum give it. It is Genesis 18:22.
The English Bible reads: But Abraham stood yet before the Lord. Ginsburg gathers the witnesses:
"In each of which it is emphatically stated that it ought to be, or that the original reading was 'but the Lord stood yet before Abraham' only that the text was altered."
Ginsburg, 1897, p. 352
The Lord stood before Abraham. Ginsburg walks through the scene: the Lord had come down to see whether Sodom had done what the cry said, Abraham "drew nigh" to him and interceded, and when the pleading was over it was the Lord who departed from Abraham (p. 353). In the older sentence the one left standing there, waiting on the man, is God.
Ginsburg is blunt about why it was turned around:
"it was deemed derogatory to the Deity to say that the Lord stood before Abraham. Hence in accordance with the above rule to remove all indelicate expressions the phrase was altered by the Sopherim."
Ginsburg, 1897, p. 353
He adds that the Massorah itself states the original reading, and that "the context, moreover, and the logical continuity of the narrative show beyond doubt that the primitive text was what the Sopherim and the Massorah state it to have been" (p. 352).
So here is a scene in which God stands in front of a man and listens, and a rule about delicacy made the man stand in front of God.
Four books, four lists
Ginsburg counts the records, and the counts do not agree.
The Mekhilta lists eleven. The Siphre lists seven, leaving out four of the Mekhilta's. The Yalkut Shimeoni lists ten. The Tanchuma gives the Mekhilta's cases and "six more instances", among them Genesis 18:22, 2 Samuel 16:12, Hosea 10:7, Job 32:3 and Lamentations 3:20, and on page 350 Ginsburg says it adduces seventeen passages and gives the original wording in eleven of them. The Massorah, in the margins, says eighteen. Another list, in a manuscript of a Hebrew grammar, has fifteen and no number at all (p. 351).
Ginsburg draws the line that matters. On page 347 he says that apart from the Massorah "we possess no fewer than four separate and independent records which chronicle this important fact." On page 348 he says the differences in number and order "show that the records in question are independent of each other and that they are derived from different sources." They list different verses in different orders and say the same thing about them.
A handful of witnesses, centuries apart, agree on a number of places where the text was handled and give the reasons in the same words.
What the edit was for
Ginsburg states the rule the scribes worked by:
"The editorial principle thus laid down that indelicate expressions and anthropomorphisms are to be removed is also illustrated in the examples which the Sopherim have given of the passages altered in harmony with this canon."
Ginsburg, 1897, p. 347
Anthropomorphisms are the places where God has a body. His eye. His nose. His standing and sitting. The scribes took the body off the page, a word at a time, and left the places where they did it in a list.
My eye became his eye. Me became it. A sentence that said God would die, even to deny it, was turned so that God and death were not in the same breath.
That is the first of the marks the editors left. The rest of this book follows them: the number of gods around God, which books were allowed in the room, the margins and headings around a king's name, the hard words for the made world, and one set of numbers.
The editors who kept receipts
The scribes were not the last to announce an edit.
Origen, in the third century, marked every change he made to the Greek Bible with a sign, an obelus for the words the Hebrew lacked and an asterisk for the words he supplied from another translator. Swete, quoting Jerome, says he was "equally unwilling to leave them without some mark of editorial disapprobation" (Swete, 1900, p. 69).
In 1604 King James named the notes he wanted gone from the Geneva Bible: "very partiall, vntrue, seditious, and sauouring too much of daungerous, and trayterous conceites", and he named Exodus 1:19 and 2 Chronicles 15:16 (Pollard, 1911, p. 46). The Council of Trent, in 1546, said its decree was "to restrain petulant spirits" (Waterworth, 1848, p. 19).
The keepers of the text wrote down what they were doing, and their reasons are in their own words. The reasons are the first evidence. The changes are the second.
Where is it now?
The pages are held. Ginsburg's 1897 volume survives in a scanned copy, and pages 347 to 353 and 356 can be read side by side with the Mekhilta in Silverstein's English. The Hebrew sentence comes from the Sefaria text of Tractate Shirah 6, saved in this book's local source library.
The manuscripts are named. Ginsburg names the St. Petersburg Codex of A.D. 916, which carries its library in its name, and three Yemen manuscripts, Orient. 1379, Orient. 2349 and Orient. 2365, which he places in the British Museum in 1897. In those three the list of the Sopherim's alterations is given with the original reading in every passage. In two of them, Ginsburg says, it is declared that "according to the opinion of some Schools they were made by Ezra himself" (p. 350).
We hold the list through Ginsburg. The margins themselves are the next documents to ask for.
The request
Send this to the library that holds the Yemen manuscripts today:
Please send images of the Massorah on Numbers 12:2 in Orient. 1379, Orient. 2349 and Orient. 2365, where the list of the Sopherim's alterations is given with its original readings. Please include the shelf marks and the folios. If the St. Petersburg Codex of A.D. 916 is in a library you can reach, please send its margins at Ezekiel 8:17 and Zechariah 2:12.
Then open Genesis 18:22 beside Ginsburg's page 352.
God is standing there, and the page says the man is.
The record in this chapter
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Ginsburg, Introduction to the Massoretico-critical Edition of the Hebrew Bible (1897), pp. 347-353 and 356. The eighteen emendations of the Sopherim, the lists in the Mekhilta, Siphre, Yalkut and Tanchuma, and the entries for Genesis 18:22, 2 Samuel 20:1 and Jeremiah 2:11. Read the book free.
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Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shirah 6, in Hebrew with Silverstein's English, from Sefaria.
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Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (1900), p. 69, on Origen's marks.
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Pollard, Records of the English Bible (1911), p. 46, King James at Hampton Court, 1604.
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Waterworth, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (1848), p. 19.
Chapter 2
The Sons of God
Genesis Rabbah, chapter 26, section 5: a rabbi of the second century is turning one verse of Genesis into Aramaic, and he stops to curse.
The verse is Genesis 6:2: the bene ha-elohim saw the daughters of man, that they were fair. The midrash keeps what he said:
רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן יוֹחָאי קָרֵא לְהוֹן בְּנֵי דַיָּנַיָא, רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן יוֹחָאי מְקַלֵּל לְכָל מַאן דְּקָרֵא לְהוֹן בְּנֵי אֱלָהַיָּא
"Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai called them [when translating this verse into Aramaic] 'the children of judges.' Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai used to curse anyone who would call them [translating the words literally, as] 'children of god.'"
Genesis Rabbah 26:5, the Sefaria Hebrew and English; the brackets are the translator's
The translator adds a footnote to that line: "In Hebrew Elohim can mean either 'God' or 'judge' (Exodus 22:8), but in Aramaic Elohaya can only mean 'God,' so translating the word in this manner would be blasphemous."
So here is a man translating a verse. He chooses the reading, and he puts a curse on the other one.
The same page
Stay in section 5. The rabbis go on to ask why these beings are called bene ha-elohim at all. Rabbi Chana, in the name of Rabbi Yose, gives this answer:
כְּדֵי לַעֲמֹד עַל הַתְּקוּפוֹת וְעַל הַחִשְׁבוֹנוֹת
"In order to track astronomical phenomena and [make the relevant] calculations."
Genesis Rabbah 26:5, Sefaria
They lived long so that they could watch the heavens turn and do the sums. The rabbi who cursed the literal reading is quoted on the same page as the rabbi who says what the sons of God were for.
Turn to section 7. The giants of verse 4 get seven names there, and every name has a story. Rabbi Abba bar Kahana says, in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: "The marrow of the femur of one of them measured eighteen cubits." Rabbi Acha says of the Anakim, in the Sefaria English with the translator's footnote left out: "It was as though they wore the sun as a necklace, and said: '[Go away and] let the rain fall upon us.'"
The curse went on the phrase. The children, the giants of eighteen cubits and the men who wore the sun all came through the chapter whole.
What the dictionary counts
Open Brown, Driver and Briggs, the lexicon of 1906, to page 43. Under elohim the entry runs through the senses of the plural: rulers and judges, divine beings, angels, gods. Then it takes up the phrase itself:
"the bene elohim = (the) sons of God, or sons of gods = angels"
Brown, Driver, Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1906, p. 43
It names who read it that way: "Bks. of Enoch & Jubilees, Philo, Jude, 2 Pet, Josephus, most ancient fathers and modern critics." It names who read it otherwise: "sons of princes, mighty men, Onk and Rab.," and "sons of God, the pious, Theod, Chrys, Jer, Augustine, Luther, Calvin."
The lexicon counts the votes. On one side stand Enoch and Jubilees, Philo and Josephus, and the New Testament. On the other stand the Aramaic of Onkelos, the rabbis, and the great names of the Church from Chrysostom to Calvin.
The Greek
The Greek Bible takes a side. In the book of Job, the Hebrew says bene ha-elohim came to stand before the Lord. The Greek says:
ἦλθον οἱ ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ παραστῆναι ἐνώπιον τοῦ κυρίου
"the angels of God came to stand before the Lord."
Septuagint, Job 1:6; the English is ours
At Job 38:7, where the Hebrew has "all the sons of God shouted for joy," the Greek has πάντες ἄγγελοί μου, "all my angels." The Latin keeps filii Dei. The Syriac at 38:7 reads "sons of the angels."
The Book of Enoch tells the Genesis story in the same words. R. H. Charles prints it on page 191 of his translation:
"And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them"
Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2, 1913, p. 191 (1 Enoch 6:2)
In his note on that verse Charles writes that "the original LXX rendering for 'sons of God' was ἄγγελοι τοῦ Θεοῦ," and names Philo, Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Augustine and Ambrose.
The line the scroll kept
Now the verse where the numbers are. Deuteronomy 32:8 tells how the Most High divided the nations. Here is the Hebrew codex, the one every English Bible follows:
לְמִסְפַּר בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל
"according to the number of the children of Israel"
Deuteronomy 32:8, Masoretic text; the English is the King James Version
Here is the Hebrew scroll found at Qumran, the one catalogued as 4QDeut-j:
למספר בני אלוהים
"according to the number of the sons of God"
4QDeut-j, Deuteronomy 32:8, the ETCBC transcription; the English is ours
And here is the Greek translation, made centuries before the codices:
κατὰ ἀριθμὸν ἀγγέλων θεοῦ
"according to the number of the angels of God."
Septuagint, Deuteronomy 32:8; the English is ours
The scroll and the Greek, two witnesses with separate histories, agree. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan goes further:
"in the division he cast the lot among the seventy angels, the princes of the nations"
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Deuteronomy 32:8; the English is ours
The next verse, in the Hebrew and the Greek alike, makes the Lord's own portion his people: Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. On the reading of the scroll, the Most High set the bounds of the nations by the number of the sons of God, and kept Jacob as his own.
Wycliffe, Geneva, the King James Version and Rotherham all print Israel, sons or children of Israel. None of them has the sons of God.
The psalm
Psalm 82 opens on the same room. The Hebrew:
אֱלֹהִים נִצָּב בַּעֲדַת־אֵל בְּקֶרֶב אֱלֹהִים יִשְׁפֹּט
"Elohim stands in the assembly of El; in the midst of the elohim he judges."
Psalm 82:1; the English is ours
The Greek: ὁ θεὸς ἔστη ἐν συναγωγῇ θεῶν, God stood in the assembly of gods. Wycliffe: "God stood in the synagoge of goddis." Geneva: "God standeth in the assemblie of gods." The King James Version:
"God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods."
Psalm 82:1, King James Version
Geneva, Wycliffe, the Greek and the Latin keep "gods." Only the 1611 turns El, in "the assembly of El," into "the mighty." The page's running head reads Iudges are gods. In the psalm's own sixth verse the Most High says: you are elohim, and sons of Elyon, all of you. The Targum replaces the gods with the righteous: "you are accounted as angels." A scroll from Qumran, 11QMelchizedek, quotes the verse and applies it to Melchizedek and his heavenly host, and it reads the next lines, "how long will you judge unjustly," against Belial and the spirits of his lot.
Seth
In the City of God, Augustine reads the sons of God as the sons of Seth and the daughters of men as the daughters of Cain. In book XV, chapter 23, he writes:
"that is, ere the sons of Seth meddled with the daughters of Cain"
Augustine, City of God, trans. Healey (1610), vol. 2, p. 81
A page earlier he names the reading he is arguing against: "in the same Scripture, where it is said that, 'The sons of God loved the daughters of men,' they are also called the angels of God. Whereupon some thought them to be angels and not men that did thus" (p. 80). He writes around the year 420, and the lexicon lists Chrysostom and Jerome, both men of his own age, on the same side of the line.
Geneva carries the Sethite reading into the margin in 1560. At Genesis 6:2 the note reads: The children of the godly, which began to degenerate. At 6:4, where the Hebrew keeps the word nephilim, Geneva has a margin, Or, tyrants, and a note: they "usurped authority over others." The 1611 page prints "the sonnes of God" at 6:2 and "Giants" at 6:4, and no margin note stands against either verse.
Seven acts
The ledger of the editors counts seven acts that take the council or its angels out of the phrase: five take away the council, and two take away the angels. Five of the seven carry a date. The Greek Bible turns the sons of God into angels, in Job and in some manuscripts of Genesis 6:2, in the third and second centuries before Christ. Rabbi Shimon makes them judges in the second century after. Jerome, around the year 400, changes the host of heaven in Deuteronomy 4:19 from something the Lord allotted to the nations into something he created for the service of all nations. Geneva writes the godly in the margin in 1560. The translators of 1611 write the mighty. The Targum of the Psalms, which has no date on our shelf, turns the gods into the righteous, and the line of Deuteronomy 32:8 that the codex carries and the English follows turns the sons of God into the sons of Israel. Neither of those two has a date. Augustine's Sethites, around 420, stand beside them: the ledger files that act under the fence, and it runs the same way.
Seven acts, with Augustine's beside them, across nearly nineteen centuries. At each step the council loses a rank. No decree stands behind them. Augustine gives his reason. The Greek translators and the translators of 1611 give none, and the rabbi gives a curse.
The council did not leave. A scroll in a cave kept the sons of God in Deuteronomy. A second scroll kept the psalm's assembly and put a judge at its head. The Aramaic of Pseudo-Jonathan names two fallen angels at Genesis 6:4. In Genesis Rabbah the same chapter that curses the literal reading counts the giants.
שַׁמְחַזָאֵי וְעוּזִיאֵל הִינוּן נְפִילִין מִן שְׁמַיָא
"Shamhazai and Uzziel, they are the nefilin from heaven."
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Genesis 6:4; the English is ours
Where is it now?
The codex carries the line the English follows. The Qumran scroll carries the other line, and our shelf holds it only through the ETCBC transcription. Where the fragment is kept today has not been traced. The Greek line is in the Septuagint, which we hold in the First1KGreek text.
The pages are open. Genesis Rabbah 26:5 and 26:7 are in the Sefaria text saved with this book's sources. Brown, Driver and Briggs page 43, Charles page 191 and Augustine pages 80 and 81 can be read side by side.
The request
For whoever keeps 4QDeut-j, the ask is an image of Deuteronomy 32:8 in that scroll, with its shelf mark and fragment number, and beside it an image of the same verse from the Masoretic codex the English Bible follows.
The scroll and the Greek say sons of God. The codex and the four English Bibles above say sons of Israel.